As most of you have probably heard, analog TV over-the-air broadcasting in the USA is due to terminate Friday night. So be aware of this if a recent residential customer starts blaming your work for making their TV set not work anymore.

Note this only applies to "full power" stations, and that repeaters are not required to do this now. I think their deadline is with the cable deadline in two years.

Where my Mom & Dad live in rural Central Oregon, they still get their TV from analog repeaters. There are no digital stations within range. My guess is they will probably make the switch as it becomes financially convenient, i.e. when repeater components break and they can't get analog replacements anymore.

There are millions of people on the fringes who will have to invest in better antennas to get the digital signals. Analog signals have a much better range than the digital, in my opinion. It is another example of our government selling off public property to the highest bidder.

The Feds and the high tech folks told us how much better the digital TV signal was and that we should all rush out and buy the new digital TV sets.We, as the public, made a choice. We wanted to keep things the way they had always been.Then the government told us that we had made the WRONG choice and that they would now make it FOR us.

If all they wanted was more bandwidth, they could have done the same thing that they did many years ago with "channel 1" on your analog TV.Just tell all the VHF channels that when they go to renew their license they'll be forced to change to a frequency on the UHF band, which already uses quite a bit less bandwidth per signal. Then they could sell off the entire VHF band...but that wouldn't address their pompous opinion that we are all too dumb to make "the correct choice" on our own.

There are millions of people on the fringes who will have to invest in better antennas to get the digital signals. Analog signals have a much better range than the digital, in my opinion.

The reason that analog TV (channel 2-13)had a better range was because it was or is in the VHF band. ALL of the digital TV stations are now in the UHF band. Telecoms have been drooling over the prospect of getting the VHF band for the last 3 decades. The main advantage of VHF band is that you can send the signal much farther with the same or less power versus the UHF band. Also you do not have the problem of nightime reflection off of the ionisphere like you have with the lower bands. Think US AM radio and CB radio during the '70's. Analog TV, US FM radio, Ham radio 2 meter band are all in the VHF spectrum. I believe maritime radios are also there.

There are several reasons the broadcasters wanted to go digital. First they could provide 6 or more channels on their assigned bandwidth (Channel)No ghosting or snow. Stations can use adjacent channels allowing for closer spacing. Analog required guard channels assigned between each channel in each broadcast area. With broadcasters competing with cable, broadband and sat., this will allow them some more choices. Another note, all the digital stations are NOT on UHF. In most of the US broadcasters are moving off of the low VHF ch 2-6 but High band 7-13 will sill be used. Most stations were allowed the choice by the FCC to stay with their temporary digital assigned freq. or return to their old analog assignment. There is NO requirement for cable co to switch. If they do its their choice, but they cannot use the same digital broadcast format as broadcasters due to technical issues. Robert

The main advantage of VHF band is that you can send the signal much farther with the same or less power versus the UHF band. Also you do not have the problem of nightime reflection off of the ionisphere like you have with the lower bands. Think US AM radio and CB radio during the '70's. Analog TV, US FM radio, Ham radio 2 meter band are all in the VHF spectrum. I believe maritime radios are also there.

Larry,Bear in mind that VHF spans 30-300MHz.Even over here in NZ, the Government have been very quick to sell off any frequencies that they can.

But on the other side of the coin, VHF is really only "line of sight" communications, you really have to have something like a repeater system for communications to be of any use, especially with terrain variations.

Over here, the VHF band is littered with services that should not even be in there, the first being Television, it takes up a HUGE part of the lower end of the VHF band (around 40-52MHz) which means that radio hams like myself can't use the 6 meter band, it is the same with the 220MHz (1.5meters), because that is smack in the middle of TV2 here.

Around about 75MHz we have the Fire Service and Police, they are going encrypted next month, but what they should be doing is moving to UHF, there is already a repeater network here.

The sooner all these TV services go to digital satellite reticulation the happier we will all be.

Mind you, the frequencies could be sold to someone worse.

We've had to live with the "splatter" from the local Telecom pager tower for the last 10-15 years on 145.700 at 90-180db/m all over the 2 meter band here

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